UPCOMING EVENTS

Electronic Arts is still getting the kinks out of Battlefield 4′s multiplayer service, but it is also staying busy, providing more content for gamers with the announcement of the Battlefield 4: China Rising expansion. It includes four new multiplayer battlegrounds on the Chinese mainland.

EA

Battlefield 4: China Rising helicopter attack

Such map packs are a way to keep players engaged with the first-person shooter, which debuted in the U.S. on current-generation consoles on Oct. 29. Such additional content is important, considering that 65 percent of players never play the single-player campaign and go straight to multiplayer. EA provides the content for free to members of Battlefield 4 Premium, which costs $50 a year. Map packs are the prime downloadable content (DLC) for first-person shooters like Battlefield, and they’re the way that Battlefield 4 will hold on to its players in the face of stiff competition from Activision’s Call of Duty: Ghosts, which is the top-selling title among the combat-shooter games.

The four new maps include Silk Road, Altai Range, Guilin Peaks, and Dragon Pass. The expansion comes with five new weapons and two new vehicles, including the dirt bike from Battlefield 3: End Game. If you seize a map’s control center, you can deploy an all-new aerial bomber.

Two new gadgets include an unmanned combat aerial vehicle (CAV) for support-class players and a small, unmanned aerial vehicle (SUAV) for the recon-class players. The game expansion will have a new air superiority game mode and 10 new assignments with their own unlocks, and it will be delivered to Battlefield 4 Premium subscribers two weeks early.

EA already released the Battlefield 4: Second Assault expansion with four maps from Battlefield 3. Those maps were redesigned to work with Battlefield 4′s Frostbite 3 game engine and to incorporate new features from Battlefield 4. The map pack is available today for Battlefield 4 Premium members and it will be available for $15 on Dec. 17 for non-members. The game is available on PC, Xbox 360, XBox One, PlayStation 3, and PlayStation 4.